Title: The Comforter, the Holy Spirit
Contents
A recently translated New Testament English translation is the "Inclusive Version". All places in this translation where God is referred to as Father are indicated as Father-Mother. We did this because we were especially considerate of women. A very intense question these days by Western female theologians is, why should God be defined only as male? This is an issue to consider. In fact, God is not only male, nor is it only female. God includes both sexes. In particular, it is the Holy Spirit who does maternal work among God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
This maternal Holy Spirit is identified in the text as the Comforter. Comforter means comforter, helper. In the text, the work of the Comforter is to “condemn the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.” Another translation of this translation would be "to open your eyes to sin, to righteousness, and to judgment." Open your eyes to see new things. That new thing is related to the kingdom of God.
This text is the same as the farewell speech that Jesus gave to his disciples shortly before the time of his death. Knowing that he is going to die, Jesus said these words to give comfort and courage to those who were full of sorrow in their hearts, because what Jesus had done had to be continued through them. What is important in Jesus' words is that He will send a Comforter and what the Comforter will do when he comes. The work of the Comforter is to open your eyes to sin, righteousness, and judgment. This means that the events of Jesus Christ do not become meaningless events in a changing world. Only then can the church stand firm and the gospel can be proclaimed with power without being ashamed of the world.
When it is said that the work of the Comforter is to open the eyes, to open it here includes the meaning of birth, growth, awakening, and renewal.
First, the Comforter opens our eyes to the coming kingdom of God through the new birth of being.
One night a Jewish ruler named Nicodemus came to Jesus secretly. Jesus told him that unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. But it is said that rebirth is accomplished through the Holy Spirit.
The Comforter brings us into a new relationship with God, transforms our inner reality, gives us new seeds of life, builds a new self in us, and renews our attitudes towards life and the reality of our lives .
Rebirth into a new creature by the Comforter is the beginning of a new life in the hope of God's future, and does not transcend the experiences of superhuman, temporal human beings. Of course, it is not an exemption from suffering. And together with hope, you will experience love and pain, life and death differently as human beings.
Rebirth through the Comforter is a life that is being formed, and its representations are reminiscent of spring in nature. In other words, it is reminiscent of the greenery of all trees and plants.
And because this rebirth presupposes living forever, it is the meeting of eternity and time.
Then, the Comforter makes us grow with rebirth.
Rebirth presupposes growing up. However, this does not aim at moral perfection in reality. This has to do with the knowledge of God.
However, the human heart is so narrow and narrow that it is impossible to know God as a whole at once. In the process of growing up in life, you will come to know it very partially. Therefore, the knowledge of God is only a fragment, and when we see God face to face, it is complete. And since the growth in faith corresponds to the seasons of life in human life, the knowledge of God also differs according to the age group. For example, the perception of God by young children, the perception of God by young people, the perception of God by parents and professionals, and the perception of God by the elderly are not the same.
This phenomenon becomes more evident in the process of individual growth. In my case, even looking back on the past, I have to admit that my perception of God differed according to the seasons of my life.
My childhood perception of God was like a mysterious grandfather in myths and fairy tales. Such an awareness of God was the image of God formed through many fairy tales I heard from the Sunday School teachers in the church. In particular, the story of the shepherd shepherding the sheep in the fields of the Gospels and the story of the magi made me imagine a lot of mystical world as a child. Meanwhile, the story was also the home of my heart as a child.
As I entered adolescence and adolescence, I met God through the biography of Christian saints amid admiration for great people. Unlike my childhood, God was cherished in my heart as the image of a holy saint. Such an image of God gave me great strength to overcome the temptations of my youth.
In college, in the midst of mental wandering and anguish, the knowledge of God was a moral God who intervened in the suffering human existence and demanded new decisions over and over again.
If I had a different understanding of God in each season of my life in the past, it was different, but it wasn't. He is the God who is present in my life right now. It was just a fragment of the knowledge of God that I partially experienced in other seasons of life.
The Counselor is the one who led me to open my eyes anew to the knowledge of God as the seasons of my life change. Otherwise, I would not have been able to remain in my faith in God. Without a change in my perception of God, I would not have been able to overcome the many life problems that come along with the change in my life. In this way, the Comforter illuminates and reconstructs the meaning of truth in the course of life's transformation so that faith is preserved. Again, the Comforter builds up and preserves the church in such a way in the changing times. That is what the church looks like in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Next, the Comforter awakens us from the fiction of idols.
Every human being has a savage within him. In the old days, when science did not develop and only human intuition was used, the whole of human life was dominated by this savage. At such a time, all the anomalies in the natural world were understood as manipulations of the gods with some mysterious power.
So I looked up to the sky and prayed, went to the mountains for help, and prayed for safety to a large rock or tree. During this period, people believed that human fate was in the hands of some volatile divine being, so they devoted almost all of their time to appeasing and pacifying the unknown, for the safety of themselves and their race. Otherwise, I couldn't live with anxiety.
After that, as science developed and humans began to think rationally, changes in natural phenomena and natural disasters were scientifically identified. In doing so, the savage did not disappear, but hid in the depths of his personality. This savage creates existential anxiety when there is nothing to depend on and hold on to. So, in the age of science, modern people who think rationally are also anxious, so they try to hold onto something as an object of trust because of a deep sense of alienation in life.
So, everyone has an idol. There are myths that the poor and the rich, the intellectuals and the uneducated, are all idols. Such idols are ideology, money, honor, success, sex, power, popularity, etc. Some people live their entire lives without throwing away the fiction of idols.
He is a very intelligent person, and the more rational he is, the greater his existential anxiety and the deeper he feels the sense of alienation in life. Anxiety is especially heightened when faced with a life crisis. Rather, foolish people believe in the sky or rely on things like stars, the sun, and the moon, so they can have less existential anxiety than intelligent people.
Idols make people stupid. Idols blind the eyes so that they cannot see. Idols point towards a fictional utopia. But the Comforter is not. It opens the eyes of the savage hidden within human beings so that we can see rightly what we really need to rely on, trust and serve, and integrate the rational and the intuitive that are separate from the human personality.
Herein lies the greatness of the characters of the Bible. Even though it was a long time ago, while looking at the things in the universe, they did not make them objects of worship, but praised God who created them through them. The Comforter imparts correct discernment.
The people of Noah's day did not see God's time when they were caught up in the idols of pleasure and pleasure. But Noahman foresaw the time of God's judgment to come. And the ark was prepared. It is impossible to see God's time coming beyond reality without the help of the Comforter.
True vision allows us to see beyond reality what does not yet exist in reality, and to do creative activities for it in reality. That vision is clearly real. Such a vision is a new perspective through the Comforter. But idols do not. Since idols are human greed, they can only see the world that is self-centered.
In that era full of idols, the Apostle Paul went through each region of Asia Minor and woke up those who were bound to idols so that they could see the coming kingdom of God.
The Comforter guides humans away from the fiction of idols and leads them to a life of trusting God. This is consistent with the saying "The Comforter originally meant to guide man from darkness into a place of light."
Finally, the Comforter renews us.
When we drive a car and the battery runs out, we can no longer get to where we want to go. Then the battery needs to be recharged. Likewise, this reality in which we live requires a spiritual recharge as it continually drains and exhausts our lives. A creative life is impossible when you live without it. Spiritual exhaustion leads to feelings of bluff, exaggeration, chatter, despair, and pessimism. It makes life dark.
The Comforter gives us true strength. That power is creativity, faith, hope, and love that can overcome darkness and affirm life.
The Comforter uses the medium to renew us. Sometimes we use a quiet place, sometimes a good book of faith, deep prayer, spiritual fellowship, the preached word, worship, or a medium such as the Lord's Supper.
Through such things, we experience the presence of God, and with confidence in the kingdom of God, we can go out into the world again and live a powerful life. The Comforter herself does not have mystical powers. The Comforter guides us on that path.
Even if there is a person who gave us a little encouragement and comfort when we met life's crises along the way and made us start over, we will never forget it in our lifetime. So how can we forget someone who has given us a new beginning in our lives, who brings us to know God, awakens us, and renews us? The Comforter is such a One for us. He will lead us to eternity.
The Comforter will carry out God's creative work from beginning to end in God's plan of hope. The creative work is rebirth, growth, awakening, renewal. We too should participate in that work every day with the Comforter. By doing so, you can live a life that participates in God's new creation while you live in this world.
The Comforter is not confined to the church. He is not limited wherever God's creative work is to be done in the world. He intervenes in human culture, in politics, and in economic activities. He was with God when He created the world in the beginning. Amen